Financial institutions have established various processes related to the exchange of documents evidencing monetary transactions. Such documents have historically been encoded with magnetic ink so that information from the documents can be read by machine. Such documents have thus become known as magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) documents. The MICR information is sometimes called the MICR “codeline” since it appears in a line across the bottom of a check.
Check processing and sorting systems have also been developed in which a check or similar MICR document has its image captured and stored electronically. Such an image can be archived so that it is indexed with its accompanying data from the MICR read as well as additional information such as the capture date and time. In high-speed check processing, situations occur where the image of a check cannot be properly captured. In such situations, an image of a substitute document might be used. Alternatively, if the check is damaged, a check carrier may be used to pass the check through the check processing system.